The concept and conceptions of transnational and global law

The following contains a transcript of the workshop, which was held in June 2015 at the Graduate School of Government and European Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The workshop marked the final stage of Dr. Avbelj's research project, supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, which was dedicated to the Post-modern challenges of transnational law to the European Union. The workshop gathered four leading scholars in the field of transnational and global legal studies: Jose-Manuel Barreto, Mattias Kumm, Gianluigi Palombella and Neil Walker. They have touched on the contemporary most pressing issues of transnational and global legal regulation

Co-registration of three-dimensional building models with image\ud features from infrared video sequences

In the European Union (EU) countries buildings consume 40% of the energy and cause 36% of CO2 emissions.\ud The thermal information of facades and roofs are important for building inspection and energy saving. Texturing\ud the existing three-dimensional (3D) building models with infrared (IR) images enriches the model database and\ud enables analysis of energy loss of buildings.\ud The main purpose of the presented thesis is to investigate methods for automatic extraction of the IR textures for\ud roofs and facades of the existing building model. The correction of the exterior orientation parameters of the IR\ud camera mounted on mobile platform is studied. The developed method bases on a point-to-point matching of the\ud features extracted from IR images with a wire frame building model.\ud Firstly, extraction of different feature types is studied on a sample IR image; Förstner and intersection points are\ud chosen for representation of the image features. Secondly, the 3D building model is projected into each frame of\ud the IR video sequence using orientation parameters; only coarse exterior orientation parameters are known. Then\ud the automatic co-registration of a 3D building model projection into the image sequence with image features is\ud carried out. The matching of a model and extracted features is applied iteratively and exterior orientation\ud parameters are adjusted with least square adjustment. The method is tested on a dataset of dense urban area.\ud Finally, an evaluation of developed method is presented with fiv

What future for the European Union?

Stimulated by the European Commission's White Paper on the Future of Europe, this article engages critically with the Commission's five scenarios. Driven by a normative ambition of equipping the EU with adequate constitutional, institutional and socio-political means for coping with its many crises, the article argues in favour of the reformist vision of the EU's future. It claims that a new constitutional process for European integration should be launched. On its basis the EU would be reconstituted as a union, a special federal constitutional form, embedded in the normative spirit of pluralism. The article presents the arguments in favour of such a scenario and flashes out the reasons for which the many constitutional actors in the EU, as well as the latter as a whole, could benefit from it. It concludes that in the following few months there might emerge a historical window of opportunity for a qualitative reformist leap in the process of European integration. While the way back to the glorious days of the nation state is effectively closed off and the present status quo in the EU is plainly unsustainable, the article sketches a theoretical framework for the reformed European Union of tomorrow

REVISITING FLEXIBLE INTEGRATION IN TIMES OF POST-ENLARGEMENT AND THE LUSTRATION OF EU CONSTITUTIONALISM

With an eye on the changes of immense if not radical proportions that European integration has undergone in the past five years, are there any grounds for revisiting the process of flexible integration and using some of its potentials for the benefit of integration in the future? This is the main question of this article, the purpose of which, in contrast to the bulk of the literature in this field, is not so much to describe or conduct a textual analysis of the flexibility clauses of various treaties, but to understand the deeper or background reasons why flexibility in the EU has developed as it has. The article consists of three parts. The first part traces the historical development of flexible integration. This is followed by a study of the reasons why flexibility has remained on the margins of the integration process. Finally, having examined the EU’s relatively non-flexible past and the reasons for this, the focus moves to its present and future